Code of Practice - Retention of Undergraduate Work

Introduction

Work by students needs to be retained because external examiners and other quality assurance review processes need to see evidence that:

1. Work is being marked to an appropriate level, with consistency and fairness, and that marking criteria are being applied appropriately.
2. Students' learning is being guided by good quality, timely, relevant and constructive feedback.

Responsibility for Retaining Work

Lead module instructors (i.e. the first named on the module descriptor) are responsible for ensuring the following samples of course-work and written assessed practical work are retained and passed to the Education Support Office in the Physics building in good time for them to be made available to external examiners when they visit in advance of the June Examination Boards. Following the Examination Board, the retained work will be archived by the Education Support Office for the period specified in the Department's Data Retention Policy.

The following material needs to be retained both for course-work and for written, assessed project/practical work:

• all final-stage dissertations and/or project reports;
• all work with a mark below threshold level;
• work with the 3rd mark from lowest;
• work with the 3rd mark from highest;
• an evenly distributed selection of work between the 3rd highest and 3rd lowest mark so that the total amount of work with an above threshold mark equates to approximately 10% of the number of students.

Notes

Retained work must demonstrate the quality of feedback given to students. If feedback is given on a pro-forma then a copy of this is also required. If feedback is given by annotating work then a copy of the annotated work is required.

To assist reviewers, a copy of the assessment guidelines given to the students and a copy of the applicable marking criteria should be included with the sample.

On request, the Education Support Office will photocopy work that needs to be returned to students.